Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, the Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications of the UAE, has remarked that Indian fingerprints will be present everywhere, as he heaped lavish praise India for making enormous technological strides in recent years.
Addressing the opening session of the Bengaluru Tech Summit earlier today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted the effective use of technology to deliver crucial government services has helped raise the standard of living of millions of Indians.
India’s ranking in the Global Innovation Index has improved from 81 in 2015 to 40. Al Olama predicted that besides technology, Indians would also emerge as leaders in other domains in coming years.
Al Olama said that technology was being driven from places like Bengaluru, which is also referred to as the Silicon Valley of India for its Information Technology (IT) exports as well as for hosting offices of global tech companies such as Apple, Google, Adobe and Cisco.
The Emirati minister said that although the futuristic technologies were coming from other places in the world as well, it was primarily Indians who are shaping them all over the globe, an apparent reference to Indian-origin people occupying top positions at companies such as Microsoft, Google and, previously, Twitter.
I don’t think that it’s just the future of technology that is going to be driven by India. It’s going to be the future of technology, education, finance and many other sectors (that’s going) to be reshaped by India.
The India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) which was signed in February would provide a stepping stone for the two economies to jointly forge a new era of technologies.
The India-UAE CEPA comprises 15 chapters and has a separate chapter on encouraging digital innovation and promoting digital transformation of the global economy.
Al Olama said that the UAE serves as a natural springboard for technology industry players who wanted to take their ideas to Africa and other parts of Middle-East.
He also expressed optimist that the I2U2 grouping comprising Israel, India, the USA and the UAE would serve as another platform for advancing collaboration in the technological domain.
The I2U2 was announced in last October, with the first leaders’ meeting of the grouping convened in July this year during US President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle-east.
One of the primary goals of I2U2 is to mobilize private and public sector investments to promote the development of critical and emerging technologies.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point Asia Technology Cooperation Blog News 2022.
